Raytheon joins fight to combat Air Force SOA attacks

Raytheon Co. will work to protect the Air Force against malicious software attacks under a $2.9 million contract.

The Air Force Research Laboratory award calls for Raytheon BBN Technologies, a subsidiary of the company, to develop new approaches to protect the Air Force’s service-oriented architectures.

SOAs help developers build reliable new applications faster and at lower costs because they can incorporate previously developed software components but apply them in innovative ways.

Military information systems are increasingly based on SOAs and are called upon to support complex tasks and missions, a company statement said.

The advanced security features that Raytheon BBN Technologies will develop under the Advanced Protected Services (APS) program will handle the multifaceted and dynamic information exchange demanded by network-centric operations more quickly and cost-effectively, the company said in the statement.

The goal of the APS program is to enable future military service-oriented information systems to detect, protect and adapt to survive attacks from motivated, well-resourced and determined enemies, it added.

"Defense against malicious adversaries is an inherently difficult problem," said Partha Pal, APS principal investigator at Raytheon BBN Technologies, in the statement. "An adversary needs to find only one flaw to exploit, but the defense needs to identify and address as many as possible."